Dan entrusts his company stock to Ricky through a bank

Dan entrusts his company stock to Ricky through a bank as a practical safeguard against his disappearance and as a way to keep Miles and Belle from seizing the shares. After escaping a traffic jam in the Sepulveda Tunnel, he turns a drugstore counter into an improvised legal office: he writes Ricky a letter, assigns his Hired Girl, Inc. stock to the Bank of America in trust for her, and mails the documents to her at Girl Scout camp. When Miles and Belle later press him for the certificate, his confirmation that he has mailed it leaves them facing a bank’s control rather than an assignment they can erase.

Background and Purpose

Dan undertakes the arrangement after escaping the log jam in the Sepulveda Tunnel. At a drugstore, he buys stamps, two envelopes, and note paper. The setting is hurried and makeshift, but the problem is serious: he fears that something may happen to him and wants Ricky to have the shares if he cannot return to claim them himself.

The choice of recipient rests on trust. Dan says he has known Ricky for half her life and considers her unusually honest; he adds that Pete shares his confidence in her. He regards Ricky and Pete as the only family he has. That sense of responsibility turns the stock transfer into more than an attempt to protect an asset: it is a plan for the people he cares about if he vanishes.

The Letter and Assignment

Dan’s letter addresses Ricky as “Dear Rikki-tikki-tavi” and asks her to keep the enclosed material secret between them. He explains that if she has not seen him for a year, she should understand that something has happened. In that case, he asks her to care for Pete if she can find him, and, without telling anyone, take the inner envelope to a Bank of America branch and give it to the trust officer to open. He signs himself “Uncle Danny,” casting the instructions as a private family trust rather than an ordinary business transaction.

The enclosed document is dated 3 December 1970, in Los Angeles, California. For one dollar and other valuable consideration, Dan assigns his Hired Girl, Inc. shares, identified by their legal descriptions and serial numbers, to the Bank of America in trust for Frederica Virginia Gentry, with reassignment to her on her twenty-first birthday. The bank is the formal holder of the assignment; Ricky is its intended beneficiary. Dan’s stated purpose is to ensure she receives the stock if anything happens to him and to prevent Miles and Belle from taking it away.

Dan deliberately avoids using the assignment form printed on the back of the stock certificate. If everything goes well, Ricky can return the envelope and he can tear up the separate sheet, avoiding the paperwork involved in having a minor assign the shares back to him. The plan therefore has two possible outcomes: it protects Ricky if Dan disappears, but remains reversible if he comes back and asks for the papers.

Mailing and Immediate Effect

Dan seals the stock certificate and assignment in the smaller envelope, places it with Ricky’s letter in the larger one, and addresses it to her at Girl Scout camp. He stamps the envelope and drops it into the box outside the drugstore, noting that it will be picked up in about forty minutes. The completed mailing gives the arrangement force beyond his private intention: the documents are no longer simply in his possession, and their next destination is the bank through Ricky.

The act also changes Dan’s own outlook. He feels lighthearted, not merely because he has safeguarded the stock, but because he has decided to face his problems rather than flee into cold sleep or try to blot them out with alcohol. He accepts that he will reach the year 2000 by living through the intervening years, rather than skipping them in a long sleep. The letter’s contingency plan and his decision to stay awake belong to the same turn toward confronting the future instead of escaping it.

Confrontation with Miles and Belle

When Miles and Belle question Dan about the stock, Belle asks where it is. Dan replies, “I mailed it.” Her alarmed follow-up asks when he mailed it, whom he sent it to, and why. Dan answers only the last question she has posed: “I assigned it.” The exchange withholds Ricky’s name, so Belle learns that Dan has acted but not who stands to benefit.

Miles asks to whom the stock was assigned, and Dan answers, “To the Bank of America.” Belle immediately recognizes what that means: it will take more than a nail file to get the assignment away from a bank, and she says they can forget about the stock. She then considers whether Dan might not actually have mailed it; if it were still available, she threatens to erase the assignment from the certificate and make him assign it to her. Miles corrects her claim of ownership to “us,” but the correction cannot alter the central fact: Dan has already mailed the documents. The exchange confirms that his choice has frustrated their immediate attempt to obtain the shares, while keeping Ricky’s identity as beneficiary undisclosed to Belle in this conversation.

Significance

The arrangement binds a personal promise to a formal financial mechanism. Dan’s letter gives Ricky instructions, a deadline for interpreting his absence, and responsibility for Pete; the trust assignment gives those instructions a specific object and a route through the Bank of America. The small, separate sheet of paper is important precisely because it can protect Ricky without making Dan’s return impossible.

The episode also makes the difference between intention and control concrete. Dan cannot ensure that he will remain present, but he can place the stock beyond Miles and Belle’s immediate reach and direct it toward Ricky through the bank. His short answers in the later confrontation show the result in action: the shares have left his hands, the attempted seizure is checked, and the beneficiary remains someone Belle does not learn about from him.